


A Mutual Dilemma

by pleasancekrillick



Category: F.E.A.R. (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Codependency, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Horror, Impending disaster, Mental Coercion, Sexual Coercion, all the coercions, human disasters, i almost feel bad making this, sexual ambivalence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 21:45:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasancekrillick/pseuds/pleasancekrillick
Summary: He wonders if there ever was a time intimacy didn't demand a price.





	A Mutual Dilemma

The bear is easily ten feet tall, white fur fringed with fine yellow strands, its head partially obscured by swathes of shadows clinging to the ceiling. Its standing on massive hind legs; arms upraised and pawing at empty air; and Becket lays at its feet, worried the beast will topple over and crush him.

He’s packed under a pile of tawdry blankets heaped at the feet of the bear, his head propped up on a naked pillow, and he stares at an old fluorescent lamp covered by a stained shade, sitting all alone on a dusty tile floor. He shivers and pulls the blankets higher around him. 

His return to reality—that is, if Fairport nowadays is any more real than where he’d been before—was not a happy one. Pain, gravity, sickness...just being truly alive for the first time in months, was enough to knock him off his feet. He was weak those first few weeks, tottering and staggering around on legs numbed by inaction. He crawled out of a drainage pipe and fell face down into the fresh snow. All alone, all except for her. He must’ve passed out, because when he opened his eyes he was somewhere else, someplace dark and hidden and safe.

A tall shadow moves across half-lit walls, behind the bear, and into his vision again. He hears the hum of electricity and a wet pattering. He wipes his face with a handkerchief and clears his throat. “Give me another day.”

The shadow stops for a second. A disembodied sigh fills the room and the lamp flickers. The shadow moves again.

Little by little, in every way, he grew stronger and stronger. Feasting on stolen rations and drugs brought to him by her minions, getting bigger, like some rat feasting on scraps under the floorboards. He emerged from his hiding spot as soon as he had the strength to carry a gun. The first man he met, he killed. 

His vision swimming, he catches a glimpse of her in the corner, a pale child in a ragged red dress, and she’s gone. He reaches behind the pillow and pulls out a manilla folder. In it is a collection of documents detailing the layout of Aristide’s compound—Perseus. He holds it more for comfort than anything; he’s already memorized its contents and every time he closes his eyes he sees it all: the myriad lines and minute notations, crawlspaces and maintenance tunnels. He can run through that place blind. The only problem is getting in. 

_ Slap _ . 

A skeletal foot lands a breath away from his face; he sees the ankle, and runs his eyes up along the thin leg, over the knee; there’s a hint of a white thigh, the frayed hem of a maroon bathrobe, and she’s gone. That’s one thing she started doing: wearing clothes. Presumably in an effort to make him more comfortable around her. She’d have better luck dressing the bear up in a tux. He sneezes, and carefully returns the folder to its place under the pillow. He shivers again, and takes another blanket off the heap of miscellaneous things they've scrounged up and adds it to the pile weighing him down. He squirms and envelopes himself further in a fabric cocoon. 

All that time in hibernation must've wrecked his immune system. Either a sore throat or stuffy sinuses, he'd never felt quite right since coming back. It wasn't until after the massacre in city hall, after he had pried the folder from the rigid fingers of that poor suit who'd died screaming, did he stumble into this...museum or whatever the hell it was where he had cached some supplies a few days before. He curled up beneath the bear without a second thought. 

Now, he's at that stage where his skin is at extremes, too numb or too sensitive, and temperature is not what it's supposed to be. Right now there's just a dull warmth. His breath mists in the crisp air and he regrets not going down to the boiler room. Most of the older buildings, in his experience, had those. 

_ I'm bored, Michael.  _

"Go check on your child, darling."

_ Ours _

_ " _ Sure."

The shadow drops and she is there, looming over the lamp, over six feet tall and glistening; dressed in a pastel bathrobe several sizes too small, the ends of the thin sash dangling from her narrow hips, and legs like thin white toothpicks sprouting out. The shadows on her face gives her a more severe appearance. Her arms are crossed—an oddly human gesture, something he would've been more likely to make. But then again, he'd noticed that she's been using phrases he often used, making gestures he usually made, and he wonders whether this is intentional or not. 

And he worries that this behavior may go both ways. This damned transference…

_ Why won't you get better? _

"I'm sick. Haven't you ever had a cold before?" When he got no response he added, spitefully, "What did your father do? Wasn't he a doctor?"

That stung. He braces for a retaliation that never comes. The apparition fades. 

"You're so helpful."

_ I don't see anyone else here for you.  _

"You killed them," he says, inwardly surprised by the calmness of his voice, "you killed them all."

A hand surfaces and swims through the dark, making a dismissive movement, then disappears. 

He bristles under the covers, but otherwise keeps his face blank. This is just one of the many games they play: casually throwing and tearing barbs out of one another with the regularity of a daily ritual. They've exchanged far worse. This is simply an exercise.

He isn't really interested in whatever branch this conversation might take. Not right now; not when his skin is dry and his ears are warm. He lays back and closes his eyes. At least his throat is clear. 

_ Michael.  _

Muted colors make waves behind closed eyelids. 

_ Michael. _

Reluctantly, he opens his eyes and props himself up on his shoulders to see the lamp is extinguished. He doesn't need it anymore. The floor and lower halves of the walls are bathed in a soft phosphorescent blue that reveals as much as it hides. He feels curiously disconnected from it all, like his body belongs to someone else. He can see the opposite wall where, set against it, is a low settee draped with furs. He can't remember whether he noticed that on the way in or not. Everything is soft and cool to the touch—not altogether unpleasant. 

He swings his head around and there's a curiously delayed reaction whenever he stops to let his vision focus. The room is endless, and he feels weightless within its ill-defined boundaries. He grips the edge of a blanket, fighting a bout of disorientation. Everything runs blue and black.

"Where are you, Alma?" He actually sounds worried.

_ Here. _

She's directly in front of him, practically at his heels. Like the room, she has changed. The bathrobe is gone, revealing a transformed body. He looks her up and down, ashamed, though he's no stranger to it. Slender legs, gentle hips, an open hand delicately hovering over her thighs in a mockery of modesty. Her fingers are very long; her gleaming nails wink at him. Jet hair cascades over shoulders and breasts the texture and consistency of porcelain. This is what he calls her Lady Godiva look, an old one she's refined to near perfection. 

She takes a few slow steps, giving him time to dread the inevitable. Swaying hair hides her eyes, but she doesn't need those to see. He watches, immobilized, imagining he is in the belly of some deep sea creature; it's visceral bioluminescence giving her skin a faint sheen.

She lowers herself onto all fours and crawls over him, black hair hanging down, dragging across the covers, towards his face. He stares fixedly upwards; the ceiling is a yawning void. Indistinct murmuring, her face buried in the crook of his neck, her body on his; the blankets don't feel so thick now. 

This is another game—roleplay, to be precise. In it, he sifts his hand through her glossy mane and lays it on the nape of her neck, he turns and presses his forehead against her crown (her face still pressed against him) and whispers a meaningless stream of endearments and apologies. All the while his other hand never stops working: it starts by caressing her back, feeling the tell-tale knobs of her spine and running all along her sides, but it somehow goes lower, lower, down the dimples in her lower back and up and over the crescent of her ass and deftly falls between her legs. She's playing her part in earnest now, rutting against his hip with abandon, curling up around him and reaching back to lay her hand over his, her lips on his cheek and a free hand on the other, crooning praise: you're so good to me, Michael, your the only one, Michael, no one else matters, Michael, just you and me, Michael, Michael, Michael ad infinitum. When she grows bored of this, she pushes herself up and perhaps she sits on his face for a bit, if she is so inclined, and if not, she straddles his waist and invites him in. Then she starts riding him, each movement bringing the game closer to a feverish climax. His participation, for the time being, is no longer needed, but he does the bare minimum to make it look like he's interested. She gasps and cries as if this is some life changing event and flops around on him and, abruptly and mercifully, stops. They wrap up with perfunctory petting and pillow talk and he, truly grasping how alone he is, hides behind a shell of self-pity and tries to convince himself that he isn't fucking a corpse on the daily, that he isn't living in a nightmare...that, eventually, this will all end. But come morning they'll inevitably go back to stabbing each other and inflicting on others what they can't do to themselves.

She has to know how he really feels about the arrangement, but she never brings it up, instead coming back for more. She must be so desperate, he suspects, for any kind of affection that she doesn't care whether it's authentic or not. Or maybe she's so emotionally stunted, so socially maligned, that she can't tell the difference and holy shit, he tells himself, that's sad. 

He cannot do this anymore. It doesn't matter that he has to play along if he ever wants to have his revenge; he cannot bring himself to go through it again. 

He pushes her off. "I'm sick," he tells her. 

She brushes her hair aside uneasily, but not enough to reveal her reaction. Her visible face is a white V wedged between flowing black strands. She purses her lips. 

"We can do hands stuff," he says. That way he wouldn't have to look at her. It'd be like a medical procedure, like what Victorian doctors did to their lady patients—impersonal and mundane. 

She's still there; she's gotten through the covers, past the flimsy long-sleeve thermal, tracing Harbinger's surgical scars with an inquisitive finger. 

"No. No. No. Not tonight."

She withdraws. He heaves a sigh of relief. Maybe after all this time they're starting to reach an understanding. Perhaps he's a good influence. He doesn't consider himself a good person, not anymore, but it's not like he has anyone to impress in this desolation. 

He blinks, and she's on the settee wrapping herself in the furs. But not completely. The provocative parts of her body are peeping out of voluminous dark folds, like ice amid black waves (this place really is getting to him). After what seemed to be a lifetime of seeing, feeling, tasting her bare and unadorned flesh, the sight of it partially concealed does things to him. A debilitating sense of shame. He shouldn't be liking this, but his eyes are fixed on the smooth curve of an exposed hip. She's all sprawled out, an arm hanging over the side and her head near the edge. She lazily taps a nail against the tile and the noise echoes in the room, impossibly loud. Her legs part slightly, and her other hand touches a raised knee, flushed purple in this submerged gloom, and it races down to unseen depths. 

Now that's interesting, in a very morbid kind of way. Usually that's a job left to him, but he's not complaining. Hazy images of her splayed fingers pass by, of her languidly caressing herself, then teasing, and, without further ado, sliding one in, then another…He's intoxicated by this vision. The floor beneath opens and he's floating on her waves, dreaming of her warmth tightening around his own digits. Startled, he lifts them to his face and sees they are still there—pale and alone. Yet they feel like they have a woman's thighs around them. He curls them until he sees his white knuckles standing out, bites them until they sting, but those sensations are just superimposed on the greater, phantom one. The tapping stops; that hand now somewhere around her bust. He can’t see this, it’s all happening under the covers, but he feels it. There are countless nerves within his body, and she can play every one. A thumb dances around a nipple and he’s gasping, grabbing his chest while reaching down, fumbling for an imaginary cunt. She laughs, a metallic reverberation making his spine coil. He tosses and turns, forcing himself to grasp the hem of his blanket. It’s not in his hands anymore, its spreading, his legs twitch and high-pitched noises come out his strangled throat.

She’s moaning, he can hear every decibel from across the room, feel every caress and probing touch. There’s an overwhelming to stroke himself off, right then and there, but, for fuck’s sake, he still has some standards. And he doesn't want to do anything for her amusement. She's a capricious creature; if she becomes bored, she'll stop and move onto another victim. He'll just have to ride it out. It's not like he hasn't been through worse. The key thing is to withdraw; what's happening to your body is not happening to  _ you,  _ that's what he told himself every time they did their business. Close your eyes and think of anything but this moment. 

But he can't look away. 

She languidly cranes her neck back and her head goes over the side; her legs part some more, revealing a long length of thigh. A foot is on the armrest, toes curling in obvious pleasure. Her chest does not rise, nor does it fall, but she's breathing, deeply. The noise emanates from the vague walls; it pounds within his skull. Everything is so damnably alive. Without really knowing it, he sucks his warm fingers and hears her sigh. For the first time in his adult life, he feels dirty. This beyond obscene, he thinks, beyond violation. He has to stop a probing hand from going down again. It can't be long now. Morning will come, and he'll dismiss this, along with several other moments, as another nightmare. A pitiful way of coping, but it keeps him sane. 

The sensation ebbs, and flows over interlocking plates of tile and through the interlacing weave of engraved vines, back to the thing writhing in its furs. He permits himself a sigh of relief. Nearly over. But the protective blankets are now burdensome; the musty air stifling, and it's too damn bright. The colors are the same, lambent blue and stark black, but the contrast is maddening. He closes his eyes and is overwhelmed by the aurora behind his eyelids. Every sense—touch, sight, smell, hearing, taste—is being keyed to an unbearable degree. The floor is hard below him. He can feel every strand of hair rising on his body, his teeth aching, and the need, the primal urge for release. He is, quite literally, rising to the occasion. 

He groans and writhes in an accumulating pool of sweat. She is laughing. 

He rolls out of his layers of rags, exhausting himself in the process. A worn out instrument. He heaves himself up on hands and knees, and, swaying uneasily, shambles in her direction, carrying his clammy skin and the vague idea of forcing her to stop. 

He notices that, for the first time, her entire face is revealed. Her upside-down hair falls down in loose tangles and clumps on the floor, framing an inverted white face with burning yellow-grey eyes. Below that, her fine, sculpted throat; it's not moving, but she's laughing harder than ever, a mad cackling, and the face is as pallid and unmoving as a death mask. The effect is deeply disconcerting. The only remote signs of her being alive (if he can call it that) are her eyes, half-lidded and smoldering. He struggles under their baleful presence. 

_ Do you want to know what I'm thinking about? _

He shakes his head, feebly. There are faded flowers and roses, vines and thorns, beneath his spread hands, their shadows tangling him up and slowing him down, impeding his progress as surely as barbed wires. His prick is throbbing. He rears himself up on numb knees and shuffles forwards. 

_ Keegan.  _

He ignores her. Keegan is dead, reduced to ash and blown away, and is now something less than that. He would know, he'd done in his squadmate himself. A bullet to the head. His limbs are clear and defined, deliberately rising and falling from the tangle of floral patterns, painstakingly slow, but he's gaining upon her quickly. Like running in the dark.

_ And whenever I did this for him, I said I was thinking of you _ .  _ Do you want to know how he felt?  _

For the first time he lets anger take control of him. It's a relief, in a way. The simmering rage makes the ongoing assault on his senses bearable. He manages to get on his feet and, after several starts and faltering steps, he stands up. Clothes hang loosely on his emaciated frame; forced stasis wasn't kind to him. He's all too aware of his slouched shoulders and thin, brittle legs. But he's still got his height, and his weight is coming back, day by day. He's distantly aware of what he was, and what he can be. There's still the promise of strength in his wiry arms. And he knows he hasn’t forgotten how to use them. 

Anticipating his impending arrival, she sinks into the furs and wraps them about herself, so that only her pale face is exposed. With her gimlet eyes and sharp features, she looks to him like one of those taxidermied owls downstairs, impassively gazing out from the trunk of a fake tree in the middle of a dusty gallery where her daughter usually plays—a faceless thing prancing around stuffed vultures and carrion birds, still and unseeing. 

He staggers over the last few steps and falls, shooting out his hands and grabbing the top of the settee for support; the thick silence is horny by the sound of scraping wooden legs. She turns her head to face him, staring past the trembling barrier of his arms and piercing him with her gimlet eyes. 

He wants to gouge them out. 

Everything is fluid and swirling. The dark furs are undulating, and their soft waves ripple wherever he touches. All else is a fantastic blur. He grabs at her, and she writhes and twists, escaping his grasp. “Damn you,” he rasps, “damn you.” He wrenches the furs of, or at least most of them, and somehow he’s in and under them, struggling against her, and this set of a chain reaction—from the tips of his toes to his crawling scalp, there is a warm dissipation of his being, he feels pleasantly loose and distended. Without thinking, he forces a knee between her legs, he can feel warmth through the thin fabric. He reaches down, feels her opening for him, and hates her all the more for it. 

She's not laughing anymore. Instead, she watches him expectantly, lips pursed, hands lying listlessly at her sides. Her lack of reaction is maddening, and worst of all he knows that that's the whole point: calculated and cruel indifference. He imagines her beautiful face peeling like a rotting fruit, strips of succulent flesh curling in on themselves, until all that's left is the thing she truly is. She cups his cheek with a cold hand and he suddenly bends and claps his mouth over hers. He bites her her lower lip, clamps down hard until there's only the copper taste of her blood, and he wonders if it's real, if he's hurting her, and he sincerely hopes so. He grinds his knee against her, and she clamps her thighs around his leg. He has a hand around her throat, feeling the silently working muscles and tendons. Maybe they can learn to get along like this. He pries himself loose. “I’m still weak,” he rasps, “turn over, it’ll be easier for me.” That’s a lie, he just doesn’t want to look at her face and they both know it, but she reluctantly allows herself to be rolled over onto her stomach. 

The settee pitches, gravity is loose, and everything is either too hot or cold...except for her. He rocks his hips against hers and she's as smooth as a dream. He gets himself off without any apparent enthusiasm or concern for the woman underneath him. He wants this game to end, and if he gets anything out of it, that's a bonus. She's unusually pliant this time around, not even trying to touch him. Her fingers are curled around the edge of her improvised bed as he heedlessly thrusts into her, not bothering to waste time finding a common rhythm. She's faceless; above her white narrow shoulders are a medusa's coils of black tendrils, all loose and spread out, one slim strand dangling over the edge—a sooty explosion on satin. Smooth as a dream, and  _ slick _ . Not much time now. And she's both under and over, lips to his ear, making soft noises, urging him, not for affection but for release. This has turned into a physical chore, a satisfaction of unbearable urges. Their drowning here, and all they have is one another. The erratic string of grunts, straining cloth gripped by white-knuckled fists, scraping settee-legs takes on a desperate intensity. 

He finds a pillow and shoves it under her hips, giving them both a better angle to work with. He's actually enjoying himself for once, and she is too. It's all pure sensation; everything feels so much sharper, more crisp, and his thoughts are wonderfully unhinged from the act. He can imagine he's taking someone more petite, with lighter hair and less curves and angles, but he cannot come up with a name. Close. He hooks an arm around her and teases her down there, laying his body over hers, slick flesh gliding over slick flesh, her hair in his lips. 

His other hand is spread out a breath away from her face. She laces her fingers in his. 

The illusion shatters; he feels, more than anything, the shards cutting him deeply, slicing through him, cleanly severing whatever connection he formed with the moaning thing quivering underneath him. He wrenches his hand away and buries her face in the cushions, smothering her, but she cannot die, and this drives him into a frenzy. He clutches a fist-full of her hair and yanks back, forcing her to look at him. Sallow eyes glower back, but she won't do a damn thing, not when they've come this far. 

They stare deeply into each others' eyes—right up to the end. There's a final reverberating cry making his teeth rattle and his skin crawl, and he rolls off just as she goes slack. They lay side by side, nestled like spoons in a cupboard, but she turns away and refuses to look at him. And that's good, that's good. Everything is draining out of him now, all pleasure and pain, and he sinks into an oblivion more barren than the world outside these fading walls. 

And he's fine with that. 

Everything is pitch black when he opens his eyes. The furs are damp, and he's cold. He feels very alone. He tentatively reaches out and feels her there, right beside him, pointedly facing away from him. It's reassuring, oddly enough. Everyone he has ever known is either dead or gone, and the world outside these walls is inhospitable and actively hostile. There are ghosts in the streets...ghosts! And if there is anyone on the outside, they most likely consider him to be a loose end—someone who has seen too much, and thus needs to be disposed of. He's seen the equipment the corporate mercs are using, and there's no doubt in his mind who's all involved in this. He's trapped in a nightmare, and so is she. Better to be with this thing he hates than be alone. He never wanted to be that way. 

"I don't hate you," he whispers, and he isn't sure if that's a lie. He's tired. 

She lays a hand over his. 

The fever breaks in the stale morning. Grey light filters in through the ruined ceiling, showing the space beside him to be empty. Alma's gone; it's as if she was never there, and that's the best way to think of it. He crawls out of the covers and goes back to his own corner of the room where his gear is. He's thirsty. He scoops up a canteen from where it lies at the clawed feet of the great white bear and he looks up at its black eyes. He can see the head clearly now; its maw is wide open, revealing twin rows of pearl teeth, the points of its fangs gleaming at him. It's a nice piece of taxidermy, he'll give it that, but the beady, gimlet eyes unnerved him. They seem to be, if he had to put in words, accusatory. He sets the canteen down, and retrieves a pistol from a canvas bag. He checks the chamber, clicks the safety off, draws a bead between the beast's gimlet eyes, and squeezes the trigger. 

The beast's head explodes, and the ringing in his ears lasts a long time after. 

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like I was skimping out on the unpleasantness, so I did this. And if I do any more Fear related things, yes, I’ll see if I can make things even worse.   
> I'm going to take a break for a bit, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop. I’d like to do something like this eventually, [Free Radical](https://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/) , except very, very, very, loosely based off the first FEAR game. But there’s another project I need to get done first. And I will get that done...eventually. 
> 
> My blog for original stuff:   
> [My Blog](https://killicksinkstains.blogspot.com/)


End file.
